


But Worth It?

by emef



Category: Austin & Murry-O'Keefe Families - Madeleine L'Engle
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:58:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emef/pseuds/emef
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zachary Gray likes books, history, corporate law, and self-destructive behaviour.  Fortunately for him, some books include tips on dealing with that.  Also, he has an analyst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Worth It?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thistlerose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/gifts).



> Ok so for the purposes of this story, all the events of [all novels] take place between 1963 (first printing of "The Moon by Night") and 1970.

Hi. My name is Zachary Gray. I used to be a jerk. But I'm slowly redeeming myself, I think. Here is my story.

Have you ever read the novel "Maurice"? Someone gave it to me once. It was at a party. I was in law school back then, and I was so bored, so bored, and I just started walking. Walking across campus, trying doors to see if they were open, going in to see what would happen. I ended up in a dorm room - there was a party going on. Seemed to be just fellas though. And light in the loafers, my pop would've called them. Turned out to be classics and litt majors though, so keeping up a conversation wasn't hard. And a nice change, to be honest. Law school hadn't turned out to be a good place to whip out my inner history buff, or to talk about books in general. I thought that culture was important to get ahead in this world, but UCLA law sure hadn't gotten _that_ memo.

'My uncle is a friend of Christoher Isherwood's, that's how I got my hands on a copy. It's not banned, it's just never been published. It's like A Room With a View, but better, if you ask me,' a mousy-haired kid was saying. He had soft-looking hands, and he was waving them around as he spoke.

'Like A Room With a View?' I asked him. 'You're talking about a book by Forster?'

Everyone turned to look at me. The kid exclaimed 'yes! He wrote it in 1913, but never published it. He only gave copies to his friends.' He looked me up and down, seemed to decide something. 'Do you enjoy Forster?' he asked.

We spent a long time talking then - something about the party was soothing, it was like... It was like nothing I said was ever too cynical or iconoclast. He told me about the book - a bildungsroman about freedom, tradition, self-discovery.... and homosexuality. Not explicit though. Basically the story goes: guy meets guy, guy has his heart hacked to pieces, guy's ex-lover gets married, guy drives off into the sunset with ex-lover's gardener. I left with a copy of the book (well, stole it, if you must know). When I finally read it, I was on a plane to Greece. This passage always spoke to me:

> _"'You care for me a little bit, I do think,' he admitted, 'but I can't hang all my life on a little bit. You don't. You hang yours on Anne. You don't worry whether your relation with her is platonic or not, you only know it's big enough to hang a life on. I can't hang mine on to the five minutes you spare me from her and politics. You'll do anything for me except see me. That's been it for this whole year of Hell. You'll make me free of the house, and take endless bother to marry me off, because that puts me off your hands. You do care a little for me, I know' - for Clive had protested - 'but nothing to speak of, and you don't love me. I was yours once till death if you'd cared to keep me, but I'm someone else's now - I can't hang about whining for ever - and he's mine in a way that shocks you, but why don't you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness?'"_

Sorry, that's a long exerpt, but it's important to me. So. Hope you didn't want to know more about my life in UCLA, because I want to skip ahead a few years. 1971. I was a corporate lawyer in New York City by then, and Maurice had just been published. I felt grand and worldly for having known about it before its publication, and couldn't help bragging about it.

'Yeah, a fella in UCLA gave it to me.' I told a junior partner. At an office Christmas party. 'Read it years ago. It's like A Room With a View, but better, if you ask me.'

He seemed really interested. He even offered me a drink. 'And did you enjoy the novel,' he wanted to know? He was wearing a soft, green cardigan, and something about his eyes made the rest of the party seem unimportant. His name was Brightman. I knew him to be a competent, competitive lawyer - he wouldn't have been talking to me if he hadn't thought I was worth his time. I didn't expect what he said next, though. 'Gray,' he said, 'you look like you're nothing but eye candy, but it turns out you're brain candy as well. I could've sworn you were only here because your daddy knew the partners. Why have you been hiding that intellect behind silky midnight-coloured hair and pink oxford shirts all this time?'

Well you could've just about knocked me over with a feather, but I didn't want to show it. Stonewall had happened just a couple years before, and it wasn't like I'd never heard of homosexuality. And anyway, you should know, New York lawyers are jaded. Nothing surprises us, nothing ever did, and nothing ever will. I didn't flinch and held his gaze. 

After that Christmas party, Brightman - first name, James - pursued me. Wandering into my office with novels or drinks or invitations to art galleries. You'd think I would have noticed that he was picking me up just as shamelessly and carelessly as I ever picked up girls in the past. I used to be so bored, you know, I would make up shocking pick-up lines and try them out, just to see what would happen. I didn't care about other people; I cared about distracting myself. I once picked up a girl called Polyhymnia (remind me to tell you _that_ story) by telling her that she "reminded me of a wild pony and that she was sophisticated and yet an innocence I hadn't seen in anyone her age in I didn't know how long." What on earth kind of a line is that? The line of a player who cares more about making an impression than he cares about the person he's flirting with, that's what.

At first, I turned him down. Then I turned him down again. And then I turned him down another time. And then... Then I woke up one morning, looked out the window, put on my shirt like I did every other day... and suddenly felt so lonely, so crashingly lonely, that I just snapped. And gave in.

Let's skip ahead a bit here - all you need to know is, he took over. He took over my life, he took over me. He would tell me when to leave the office and where to meet him. He would grab me a shove me into bathroom stalls and broom closets and my own hallway floors and put his tongue into my mouth and his fingers in my boxer shorts. And made me feel as though I'd suddenly woken up. Like colours and flavours and words finally meant something. I felt like James had cracked me open and found the feelings inside. I didn't just find love; I found my emotions.

But James Brightman was a player, and he only picked me up because he was bored, and he hacked my heart into little pieces.

I know it seems as though I'm skipping ahead too much, but see, this is a story about redemption, not a story about my heartbreak. I cried. I stopped showering. I couldn't look in the mirror any more. I couldn't make myself put on my nice oxford shirts - it was like I thought that nice clothes expressed hope. Or... or like I thought that nice clothes expressed hope that someone would ever care about me. Or even notice my existence. Ever.

I did what any New Yorker would have done: I went to see an analyst. And boy, was _that_ an eye-opener. I don't know when it was, exactly, that the realizations started tumbling out, but when they did, they were like a flood that couldn't be stopped. I told my analyst about Vicky Austin, the girl I picked up in a camping ground and endangered both in a car _and_ a plane. I told my analyst about Polyhymnia O'Keefe, the girl I picked up in Greece and left with some people who might've used her for human sacrifice (seriously, remind me to tell you that story.) I told the analyst about my parents. I talked about my parents for so long, my analyst, Miss Blankenship, sometimes had to kick me out of her office. She is a badass who knows how to kick out a narcissistic jerk like me.

'And how does that make you feel,' Blankenship asked.

'I just never noticed that my pop didn't take me seriously. He gave me everything, but didn't take me seriously. It was as if he never actually cared if bad things happened to me. And my mother cared, but... but she only cared about bad things happening because of how they might affect _her_.  


'Yes but how does that make you _feel_ , Gray?'

'I just always, secretly, thought that my heart condition was due to my parents ignoring me. And I thought that if I found a cure, I would repair the errors of the past. I kept trying to shoehorn some people into being substitute parents for me.  


'That is interesting thought, hon, but it's not about feelings.'

'I kept trying to shoehorn people - women, particularly - into being moral compasses for me. People who would tell me that my parents had been wrong, and that I, Zachary, was a good person worth paying attention to. But I kept doing horrible things, trying to see if they would love me anyway. Trying to see if they would ignore their moral, ethical qualms and love me anyway. That girl, Vicky... I thought she would fix all my problems - would fix _me_ , really. But she only ever liked me because of how I made her feel. Like she was wild. Like she was involved with a bad boy. She wanted to fix me. She didn't like me being an atheist, and she didn't like my interest in corporate law. She didn't like who I really was. Just like I didn't care about her, deep down. She was sanctimonious.

'...'

'I feel... sad and angry. But I also feel relieved. I feel like I'm just waking up from a bad dream. In my bad dream, I felt like something was missing but I didn't know what it was, and I kept looking and looking and looking. And everyone around me seemed like they knew what that thing was, but they didn't want to tell me, and they didn't want to share. But now I've woken up and I know that really the missing thing was my parents' care, but that I can't get someone else to be my parent, because it doesn't work that way, and furthermore, I am an adult and I am strong and I can care for myself better than they ever could. And knowing that makes me feel relieved. Up until now I spent time with sanctimonious girls who didn't really care about who I am, because I didn't really like myself either. But now I've woken up and I've realized that I can be whoever I want, so long as it doesn't interfere with other people, and I think... I might like myself after all.'

'Excellent, that's good enough for today. Time for lunch.'

And I went home and wrote some apology letters to Vicky and Polly. But really, the important part isn't expressing regret. It's knowing how to avoid regret in the future.

So that's it. That's the story of how I used to be a jerk, but I'm slowly redeeming myself.

In the end, my bildungsroman didn't end like Maurice. I never had my own young man who took me away from the world. In the end, I only had myself. But I think that maybe, being my own redemption has been better than putting all my need for redemption in someone else. Stoics say that -

> _"Philosophy does not promise to secure anything external for man, otherwise it would be admitting something that lies beyond its proper subject-matter. For as the material of the carpenter is wood, and that of statuary bronze, so the subject-matter of the art of living is each person's own life."_

I think about that a lot.

I think maybe this is a story about finding meaning, finding a reason to get up in the morning, and finding the will to redeem oneself. Or maybe not. Maybe that's not what this story is at all. Maybe it is just a story about how a work of fiction can change your life.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a note found on the Maurice manuscript: "Publishable, but worth it?"


End file.
